Posts archive: October 2004

Ed Ruscha has gotten the nod to represent the US in the 2005 Venice Biennale.

- Meredith Tromble [Friday, October 29th, 2004]

in which Philip Barlowe looks down his nose only to be betrayed by the Board and Libby Lumpkin steps in. Also, pandas are involved…

- Meredith Tromble [Thursday, October 28th, 2004]

And perhaps proof that there is a Guggenheim everywhere. In the appropriately named “Pursuit of Pleasure” exhibition at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian, masterworks from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna share rich chocolate brown walls in a building designed by visionary Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

How bizarre is this collaboration between the Guggenheim and the Hermitage? Let’s see. This museum resides in a hotel, one that remakes Venice in the middle of the desert? Strange, and strangely satisfying. There were a number of stellar works in this extravagant exhibition, highlighting the pursuits and pleasures that Las Vegas is infamous for. Standouts were Theodoor Rombouts “Card Playing” from the 17th Century and the small but voluptuous “A Game of Billiards” by Louis Leopold Boilly. Interesting to see Picasso, Rousseau and Boccioni together, and in an exhibition focusing on pleasure. Picasso, yes, absolutely, but the other two, I don’t know, perhaps anti-pleasure.  See for yourself at the Guggenheim Hermitage website.

- amy berk [Thursday, October 28th, 2004]

Obsessive pursuits and private universes figure prominently in “Down Here” at the Bergen Kunsthall. Anri Sala’s “Nocturne” contrasts a pair of young men in Lille, one tending a large collection of tropical fish, the other haunted by his clandestine work in the Balkans War. Miranda July’s “The Amatueurist” features a slightly off-kilter researcher discussing her relationship with a captive woman, possibly her alter-ego, who she communicates with via a video link and a set of numbers. And Kulig Ataman’s “The Four Seasons of Veronica Read” follows the title characters delight as she talks about and tends to her collection of Amaryllis flowers. I had seen this two years ago at the last Documenta, but had forgotten how fresh it seemed there; a second viewing reveals no signs of age.

Next door at the Bergen Art Museum, Ataman’s four-screen aesthetic fares less well in a survey of the work of Jane and Louise Wilson. With the three of the four video works sharing the same four-channel format and conceptual strategy, an architectural investigation of a now disused site of government and/or military operations, the pieces seem a bit leaden and interchangeable. Only “Dreamtime,” which documents a Russian rocket launch escapes this by virtue of its linear narrative and the fact that the large military object in question, the rocket, actually does something.

In case you were wondering what Magne Furuholmen, the keyboard player from a-ha, is up to these days, it includes producing some of the most ill-conceived public artwork I have seen in a long time; this beauty, located perilously close to a UNESCO World Heritage site, also produces steam occasionally in a vain attempt to integrate itself into its surroundings.

- Ed Osborn [Saturday, October 23rd, 2004]

“When the 2000 presidential election turned into a grim burlesque of recounts, chads and litigation, it would have been hard to imagine the voting booths of Florida as the raw material for an art show. Especially an art show that could make you laugh…” writes David Segal in the Washington Post. But, Segal continues, students at Parsons, provided with the infamous Votomatics, have turned in a “don’t miss”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37095-2004Oct15.html">exhibition.

- Meredith Tromble [Sunday, October 17th, 2004]

Stretcher has been enjoying working with Neighborhood Public Radio as part of The Way We Work at Southern Exposure. Now we hear that the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is getting behind low-power radio there, in the form of an exhibition called Radio Re-Volt: One Person .00One Watt.

- Meredith Tromble [Friday, October 8th, 2004]

From the editors